Lama's Escape Inflames Buddhist Rivalry

By BARRY BEARAK

Published: February 3, 2000

RUMTEK, India—
Deshin Shekpa was born in the year of the male wood mouse (1384), and it is said he could be heard chanting a mantra and reciting the alphabet while still inside his mother's womb. At the moment of his birth, he boldly proclaimed himself to be the fifth incarnation of the Karmapa, one of Tibetan Buddhism's holiest figures.

Ancient texts describe the fifth Karmapa as a conjurer of miracles, able to light the clouds with iridescent colors and summon flowers to fall from the sky. But his many teachings, while a source of soothing wisdom, also included a dark prophecy: centuries in the distance, during the time of his own 16th and 17th incarnations, the demonic power of ''perverse aspirations'' would bring the entire Karmapa lineage close to destruction.

This vision seems to have been eerily prescient, for now, as the world enters the Tibetan year of the male iron dragon, there is not one claimant to the title of Karmapa but two, both of them teenage boys whose mentors find the aspirations of the other wickedly perverse.

On Dec. 28, one of those boys, 14-year-old Ugyen Trinley Dorje, fled Chinese-controlled Tibet, enduring an overland journey across the snowbound Himalayas. On Jan. 5, he arrived in Dharmsala, the picturesque Indian hill station that is home to the Tibetan government-in-exile.

His sudden presence, while a ticklish matter between India and China, which have been working to overcome long-strained relations, has been a cause for rejoicing among most Tibetans. The Karmapa is usually considered the third most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, after the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, and the newly arrived boy had the unusual distinction of having been endorsed as the 17th incarnation by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government.

But there has been significantly less joy in New Delhi, home to a rival faction that insists it is the one with the genuine Karmapa. Shamar Rinpoche, a high lama also known as the Shamarpa, has been championing this second contender since 1994.

At stake is not only the leadership of one of the oldest branches of Tibetan Buddhism but one of its richest monasteries as well. And that has kept the Shamarpa desperately busy denouncing the newly arrived teenager and his patrons as perpetrators of fraud.

''Buddha would not be laughing right now,'' the Shamarpa said. ''This is all about politics. It's a story filled with many traitors and betrayals.''

Such intrigue is hardly uncommon to the Buddhism of Tibet, which, before the Chinese occupation in the 1950's, was a theocratic state where spiritual passions often bumped up against worldly ambitions. The highest lamas are believed to be so spiritually advanced that while their physical form may perish, their superior consciousness lives on in other bodies and can be recognized. Rival disciples sometimes disagree about which child has become the new vessel.

Taking a rare precaution against such discord, the Karmapa often leaves a ''prediction letter'' with clues about where to find his next incarnation. This guiding document, however, sometimes can be hard to locate and stubbornly cryptic once found.

''This Karmapa dispute is sort of a medieval tragicomedy,'' said Tsering Shakya, a London-based scholar who has written a history of modern Tibet. ''Who really knows who the Karmapa is? On one hand, there are these arguments about dreams and prophecies. On the other, there are the highly rational matters of controlling money and property.''

There is international politics as well. The 14-year-old's escape from Tibet's historic Tsurphu Monastery is an embarrassment for China. In 1992, government officials had permitted the boy's enthronement as the 17th Karmapa, using him as a showpiece for a purported revival of religious tolerance. Chinese officials have now explained his departure by saying he was visiting India to fetch belongings of the 16th Karmapa and warned India against granting him political asylum.

At present, Tibetan authorities in Dharmsala are prudently keeping the teenager in seclusion as Indian and Chinese diplomats attend to the fractious matter of his status.

If he is allowed to stay, his eventual home is likely to be here in the village of Rumtek, where the 16th Karmapa, who fled Tibet in 1959, built a lavish monastery in the Himalayan state of Sikkim, which has since been annexed by India.

The Rumtek monastery has been this conflict's main battlefield, a place where religious gatherings have turned into brawls. The buildings are multilayered, with tiers of white, yellow and oxblood. The Karmapa's throne is centered in a grand assembly hall, where ornate wooden casements hold 1,000 Buddha statuettes and hundreds of ancient manuscripts.

Stored in a locked room are other treasured relics, most important the bejeweled Black Hat that has been worn by every Karmapa for 600 years.

Last week, the monastery's monks were ecstatic. Some recently had been to Dharmsala and seen the 14-year-old and were speaking of his aura, his calm and the ways he reminded them of his previous incarnation.